Psychology of management

The primary aim of our course
is for you to form an idea of the role and multifaceted 
content of psychological component of a leader’s managerial activity, increasing psychological 
culture of future specialist for successful realization of professional activity and self-
improvement. 
During this semester we will view: 

An organization as a structural social entity 

Executive’s personality and content of his/her professionally essential qualities 

Styles of management 

Leadership 

Relations between a person and a group and peculiarities of team-work 

Motivation of labour 

Methods of psychological influence 

Social-psychological climate in a collective 

Conflict and extreme situations in a collective 
and many other items. 
3. Complications in the defining of leadership. 
Probably no other topic connected with people’s social position has ever caused such a 
great interest among sociologists, psychologists, philosophers, and other specialists in the area of 
humanitarian knowledge like the topic of leadership. In the world there have been gained 
brilliant military victories, created powerful empires and corporations, and all this was thanks to 
foresight and guidance of outstanding leaders. Leaders’ behavior, their decisions (especially in 
politics) affect destinies of many millions of people. 
Practically all people being members of work collectives experience the impact of 
leaders, comply with decisions taken by executives (managers). On the decisions taken by 
leaders depends political and economic state of society, work collectives, well-being of millions 
of families.At first, researches on leadership concentrated on a considerably small number of 
great people and pronounced leaders working in organizations, and probably possessing certain 
traits which were inherent to them to various degrees. 

---

10 
In the middle of the XXth century scientific research in the area of leadership faced the 
fact that they constantly had to deal with a very big number of exceptions relating to particular 
traits of a leader’s character. 
That is why the researchers’ focus of attention shifted to a leader’s behavior, methods of 
management peculiar to him/her, and hence to a leader’s notions of his/her subordinates and so 
on. At present, many scientists think that a leader’s success should consist in correspondence of 
his/her reaction with the situation (s)he is facing. 
Leadership takes place within a group of people who have to solve problems affecting 
their interests. In the process there appears an intricate complex of relations between the leader 
and the other group-members. It is impossible to embrace all of them in a single definition. 
The most consistent classification of leadership in a broad sense was proposed by 
American researcher R. Stogdill who classified all the leadership definitions according to 11 key 
concepts. I’ll provide here this classification in an abridged form. 
1. 
Leadership as the center of group interests.
The leader is a spiritually-emotional center 
of the group, an expression of power in one person. (S)he determines the group’s structure, 
atmosphere, ideology, and group interests. 
2.
Leadership as manifestation of personality qualities.
This group of concepts has 
enabled to reveal a certain optimal set of personality characteristics enhancing success in 
winning and holding the leadership position. 
3. 
Leadership as an art of consent attainment.
The ability to attain consensus, loyalty, 
and cooperation on behalf of subordinates, the ability to settle conflicts – such leadership is 
called the consensual one. Here, leadership is an instrument of submission of the group to the 
leader’s will. 
4. 
Leadership as action and behavior.
Here, stress is made on leadership’s behavioral 
aspects: a leader’s behavior is any of his/her actions, undertaken by him/her to manage and 
coordinate the work of the whole group (e.g. distribution of duties, encouragement and criticism 
of group-members, motivation to achieve better results, etc.). 
5.
Leadership as an instrument of reaching a goal or a desired result
. In these concepts 
leadership effectiveness is directly connected with the satisfaction of the group’s needs. 
6. 
Leadership as interaction.
In this case leadership is understood as an effect of a group 
action. According to this approach, a necessary condition for a successful leadership is its 
realizing, and support on behalf of group-members, such interpersonal relations when group-
members fulfil a task because they want to do it. 

---

11 
7.
Leadership as the ability to persuade.
There is a difference between a leader and 
management. If the latter is the art of compulsion and use of force or a threat to use force in 
order to make people follow in a certain direction, a leader governs with the help of persuasion, 
incentives, and by means of his/her own example. Such behavior of a leader is characteristic of 
many political and social organizations, mostly informal ones. 
8. 
Leadership as exercise of influence.
Leadership is viewed as a process of influencing 
an organized group’s activity, complementing norms and prescriptions for accomplishing a task. 
In this case a great importance is attached to analysis of interpersonal relations. 
9. 
Leadership as relations of power.
This is a specific form of leadership relations, an 
ability of one individual to dominate the others and overcome resistance of the followers 
(employees). If one individual in a group can achieve the change in another individual’s 
behavior, we deal with an act of leadership. 
10. 
Leadership as role differentiation.
This definition is based on the role theory of 
modern sociology, according to which all members of society – groups and public organizations 
occupy a certain place within the system of social statuses. Every participant of leadership-
subordination relations plays a definite role, and leadership can be viewed as role differentiation. 
The basis of such differentiation is the process of interaction and mutual influence between the 
group-members when one individual influences others, while they react to this influence. 
11. 
Leadership as initiation or construction of group structure.
Here leadership is viewed 
as a process originating and sustaining a group’s role structure. A leader tries to construct its 
structure in a way that could legitimate his/her leader’s status. These processes are of special 
importance on the stages of establishing new collectives whose structure is still not stable in 
character. 
This example of classification of leadership definitions demonstrate that it is impossible 
to come up with a single unambiguous definition of leadership which would embrace all its 
aspects. Nevertheless the task gets simpler if the issue is 
organizational leadership
, or leadership 
in an organization. 
This is connected with the fact that an organization can be easily defined as a group 
uniting two or more people on the basis of a statute, agreement, contract, or any other document 
regulating their position in the organization who consciously act for achieving a goal. 
Let us make use of the following definition of organizational leadership: 
“
Leadership is a type of managerial interaction between the leader and the followers 
based on the most effective for the particular situation combination of various sources of power 
directed at inspiring people to achieve common goals”
.